


Anatomy Of A Breakup

by fortunata13



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 09:45:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunata13/pseuds/fortunata13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 4.15 in which we have a front row view of just how deeply hurt Myka is over losing H.G. and the long lasting effect it has on her life. There's also a brief final encounter between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anatomy Of A Breakup

There are degrees of sadness, just as there are of pain. Some cut like a knife, leaving scars that run so deep, it feels as if the fabric of your very soul has been shredded to pieces. It’s the kind of sadness that makes getting out of bed feel like a major accomplishment, like something for which you should be applauded, or maybe even receive an award.

Everyone around you walks on eggshells because experience has taught them that one wrong word will trigger a deluge of tears. In this case, the likely culprit is a name. That name, therefore, is to be avoided at all costs. Then there are objects –– in this case a warehouse full of objects –– each of them, having over time taken on meaning and an emotional significance that precipitates a sea of memories –– both good and bad ones. Curiously, it’s the good ones that are most painful for they speak to what might have been.

Life is suddenly a minefield, a place in which at any moment, one wrong turn could lead to a tremor that will topple over the house of cards in which you now reside. Your friends, mercifully, don’t broach the subject anymore because they’ve come to understand that there are no words, or distractions, or even an artifact that can put things right.

The worst part is that you’re strong, strong enough to keep up appearances, to go on living, or rather, doing what to an outsider looks like living, but really you’re dying inside. Because that’s who you are, that’s what you’ve done for the whole of your life. Somehow, you’ve reached into a place deep inside of yourself and drawn enough strength to keep going.

Only this time it’s different. This time someone took away the sun in the sky, and the summer birds, this time you’re all alone. And the one person to whom you would have looked for solace is the person who took it all away.

For a moment, you reason that you’re free now. Since you first laid eyes on her you’ve been in a place of uncertainty, an undefined space in which everything seemed possible and impossible all at once. It shouldn’t hurt you to be free. You know it’s exactly what you need to pull yourself together, but the days, they’re so long, impossibly long and you don’t know what to do with yourself.

Then one morning, after months of crying yourself to sleep at night, it dawns on you: it’s not going to get better, not ever. That cliché about time healing all wounds is a lie. All time does is cover those wounds with unsightly scar tissue. You’re a different person than you were before she left, before she chose a life that doesn’t include you. 

It still hurts –– it will always hurt –– but now you know that there’s only one alternative. So you do it, you learn to live with it. That’s the only alternative: learning to live with it. The pain, the sadness, it’ll be your constant companion –– best to make it a friend, not a foe.

You live your life like that for years. You do all the things people do. You take lovers, you make plans, you find small ways to be happy. The highs aren’t as high as they used to be, but it’s to be expected. That night, when she chose someone who isn’t you, it was as if the lights were dimmed and the volume on life turned down. Even ice cream doesn’t taste as good as it once did but that’s your reality now, so you learn to live with it. Because you’ve already learned that that’s your only alternative.

Years later, the unthinkable happens. “Myka,” she says, taking hold of your forearm. You shut your eyes for a moment because looking at that face that you never stopped loving may kill you right where you stand. And then you’re in that driveway all over again, looking back at her through the window of Pete’s SUV, with tears streaking your cheeks –– and your dreams shattering before your eyes.

It takes you a moment to say it, and you wonder if you even know how to anymore because after that night, you never said it again. “H – Helena.” The weight of it is staggering and by the look on her face, you know that she knows.

“You’re as lovely as I remembered,” she says, with a sudden rush of emotion because now she’s back in that driveway, too, and she’s reminded of everything she gave up for the sake of chasing a ghost. For a moment, she feels like she can’t breathe, just like when she stepped into the bronzer a century ago. She has to look away, because all of this is too much. When she looks up again, her eyes are glistening and her lower lip is quivering. 

You take a step to close the distance between the two of you. “Helena, are you all right?” You tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear, standing so close to her that you can smell her hair.

Helena tips her head and wipes away tears. The two of you stay like that for several minutes, standing on Fifth Avenue on Christmas Eve without a word passing between you. “Myka, I’m sorry,” she finally tells you and it feels like a knife through your heart. It shouldn’t but it does.

Then it’s over. You have tickets to the Nutcracker and your friends are all waiting. It’s the first holiday you’ve taken in years. “Myka,” one of them says, causing you to turn around. “We’re going to be late.” It takes you a moment to register what she’s saying, and by the time you turn around, Helena is looking at you with tear-filled eyes from the back seat of a departing taxi cab.


End file.
